Don’t mind if I do!
Terrible, terrible decision you made there, sir. Can't see how you could've done any better, though.
More than that. EVERY decision he makes in that movie is the wrong one. He decides to make a try for the gas pump. But the keys he has doesn’t fit it. He doesn’t want to hide in the cellar. But the Zeds break in and kill everyone but him, and THEN he goes and hides in the cellar. Etc, etc. He seems to take the “right” action, but it blows up in his face every single time.
On a lighter note, the first time I read Pride & Prejudice I totally bought Mr. Wickham’s sob story about how Mr. Darcy had mistreated him, so I can’t blame Elizabeth Bennet and the other good people of Meryton for falling for it too. Everyone might have been more skeptical if Mr. Darcy hadn’t been an unpopular local figure already, but Mr. Darcy had been acting like a stuck up jerk.
There aren’t any truly horrific consequences to this, but if Mr. Wickham had not been regarded as a charming guy who’d been done wrong then Lydia Bennet might not have been so quick to run off with him. Then again, Lydia was boy-crazy and not all that bright, so if it hadn’t been Wickham it might just as easily have been some other young officer.
I’m not so sure of that. IIRC, he didn’t sell the watch outright, but pawned it, which meant he had a shot at getting it back. And even if I’m wrong about that, her hair might never return to its former glory. If they were so poor, she probably wasn’t getting enough dairy and protein. So her hair might not grow back as thick, or it might grow back dull brown instead of mahogany, and it might never grow as long as before.
I am Legend (the novel by Richard Matheson)
The sole uninfected survivor of a pandemic, Robert Neville, is killing the infected in, well, good faith, and honestly tries to come up with a remedy to cure the “vampires”.
But he doesn’t realize that the infected are still humans, sentient beings, who are already rebuilding society.
They are not monsters, just a different kind of humans – who consider him to be the murderous predator that he saw in them.
I think Neville’s mistake is perfectly understandable and his intentions honourable; it’s hard to imagine how he could have come to a different conclusion based on his knowledge and experience but that doesn’t change the fact that he turned himself into a mass murderer.
Many of the heroes in Schiller’s works, example: Don Carlos
Don Carlos is a historical tragedy set in Spain in the time of king Philip II (16th century).
The king, his son Carlos, Prince of Asturias, and his son’s best friend, the Marquis of Posa, all try to do their best (from their perspective) to simultanously a) solve the outer political conflict between Spain and its provinces in the Netherlands, b) to mend the chasm between father and son and c) try to reform the political organization of the empire that was showing clear signs of decline.
And though the decisions of those three men in the course of the play are mostly sound and generally either made in good faith or at least not in the spirit of mischief, they lead to total desaster:
The Marquis is shot in the end, Don Carlos, heir to the throne, is handed over to the Spanish Inquisition (quite unexpected, in fact) and Philip is left with rebellious provinces, a revolt of his own people and the knowledge that he has put an end to his dynasty and to every hope of a reform of his faltering empire.
The speech of the Marquis in which he boldly demands “Gedankenfreiheit” (freedom of thought) from Philip has been read by almost every German pupil with some higher education and outlines pretty closely Schiller’s political thoughts that were far more conservative than many still seem to believe.
The hero of the Greek Tragedy
I think a special case of your scenario is pretty much every hero of the Greek tragedies who is trapped in a situation where every decision he makes leads to desaster, regardless of his intentions and sound judgment.
He cannot not become guilty because he is stuck in a conflict with no positive solution.
Of course, in his case the gods or destiny, an outer influence, have put him in such a situation, so we could argue about the question whether the hero has the kind of freedom in the first hand that you might have taken for granted when you came up with your question?
Another special but related case are many heroes in time travel novels; Pamela and Jeff in Grimwood’s Replay are sent back into their own past, live their lifes and are hurled back again when they die (though not precisely to the previous date); in one of their “replays” they try to prevent catastrophes they know will happen by going public with their knowledge.
Unlike Cassandra, they are soon believed, like her, the knowledge of the future doesn’t do any good in the long run, quite to the contrary: they are both imprisoned by the government and it becomes apparent that their influence has changed the political culture to the worse.
The heroes in time travel novels know of the bad things that are going to happen but often their knowledge and their attempts to improve things lead to a worse future than they had known.
While Mel Gibson took massive liberties with the truth and, as far as I know, invented the nickname “Braveheart”, the film is based on actual historical events. William Wallace did win important battles against the English, but then lost other ones. If anything, the truth about the battle of Stirling Bridge is more interesting than what was depicted on a featureless (Irish) field in the film.
cough Easy Rider? :dubious: